Posts by Old Tom 226 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Mar 2009
"so the Government are legally bound to respond in some way"
No, the government can completely ignore 38Degrees petitions. If it were a petition on the UK Gov & Parliament petition site, it would get a response from the government at 10,000 signatures and considered for a debate in Parliament at 100,000 signatures.
As a regular buyer from Bandcamp - although it's tough for the folk involved - I don't really care that the editorial department that promotes new music is now down to three people, for me they could axe the whole department, I wasn't really aware they had such a department apart from the fact that someone must be choosing 'album of the day'.
I'm happy to get alerts from their computer when artists on my list release something. Otherwise, I just go there looking for something specific (first port of call as the artist will get more money than if I buy from any other retailer) or to see what's available for specific artists.
It's hilarious how those who denied (the reality) that freedom of movement held down wages for British people in lesser-paid jobs ("Brexit lies") are now finally admitting that in fact wages were indeed being held down. Sadly, the suggested solution is 'get more people who are willing to do the job cheaply' rather than 'pay what we need to to get the staff'.
A common use for FM on my phone is listening to pre- & post- match football claptrap on local radio while going to and from a match. Much better than trying to stream in the vicinity of a stadium when you're competing with thousands of other people for throughput on overloaded masts, and anyway as you say they cut the internet feed during play and always seem slow to restore it afterwards. (Not to mention that it's only recently that I've had a big enough data allowance to stream.)
Notwithstanding that many El Reg readers might prefer 26⅔ Skateboarding Rhinos, wouldn't '40 tonnes' be easier to write?
I know people say 'metric ton[ne]' to avoid confusion with the US (short) & Imperial (long) Ton, but does it really matter in these contexts? They're not that much different, but in the written word we can see the difference anyway.
Bizarre that Brexit would cross anyone's mind on this subject (and you're not the first to mention it in the comments to this story).
I guess it shows how deeply ingrained it has become among some to look for a Brexit angle in almost anything.
I always hate it when we're told some fantasy number of homes that power schemes will power. In this case they're saying that 196MWh will last 300,000 homes for two hours but that allows each home less than 1/3kW. Is 1/3kW a standard per-home figure in such calculations or do they just make numbers up to suit?
It's nothing to do with "getting EU funding", nobody's asking for EU funds. Sixteen non-EU countries participate in Horizon both paying and receiving funds (that's Horizon funds, not EU funds), membership of Horizon is not dependent on EU membership.
I refer you to the first part of the sentence that you quoted the end of - "The government is disappointed that the EU is still linking UK association with wider issues" - this is the nub of the matter: in the Withdrawal Agreement the EU and UK agreed that the UK would participate in ongoing research projects, including Horizon, but the EU have prevaricated on implementing that agreement on Horizon as a lever in the ongoing dispute over NI.
It's up to them if they want to make such mard-arsed 'I won't be your friend' decisions, but it looks like they are, and the UK can't wait forever and so allocating the would-be Horizon contribution to research within the UK.
I won't repeat myself again after this, but anything with VAT on in a member state can not have its rate cut to less than 5%.
HM Gov did not lie, they could not go below 5% without either leaving or getting cross-state agreed and ratified permission; the latter had been fought/lobbied for for many years and was in fact in the very slow pipeline, eventually it might have been allowed but not in 2016, and I don't think even now.
If you negotiated exemptions when joining - as the UK did on food, books and children's clothing - then you can keep those VAT free. But once you add VAT to a formerly exempt product - as the UK did on household gas & electricity - you can't then remove it (hence the 5% rate we still have on household energy bills - HM Gov could now drop this, but choose not to do so).
Ireland included sanitary products (and "Supplies of wax candles and night-lights that are white and cylindrical, excluding candles and night-lights that are decorated, spiralled, tapered or perfumed") on their zero-rated list when they joined, the UK did not.
UK workers rights often exceed EU ones - e.g. 52 weeks maternity leave (39 paid) v. 14 weeks paid, 2 weeks paternity leave v. none, 28 days annual leave vs 20 days...
The Equal Pay, Sex Discrimination, Health and Safety at Work and Employment Protection Acts didn't come from Brussels, the only significant improvement I can remember coming from the EU was the working time directive.
The UK is perfectly capable of maintaining standards outside the EU.
We did leave the EU, of course - but in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement it was agreed that the UK would be (along with a dozen and a half other non-member states) a participant of the Horizon programme. Not being a member state doesn't have to prevent us remaining friends and collaborators.
Unfortunately, having decided that delaying ratification is a good bargaining chip against unrelated matters; the Commission are delaying ratification for political reasons. This is much to the chagrin of many EU academics and researchers - https://www.euractiv.com/section/uk-europe/news/eu-must-immediately-accept-uk-into-horizon-europe-say-blocs-research-leaders/
No according to today's Telegraph - the article claims that the British took apart an Exocet seeker head in order to help develop electronic counter measures.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/03/full-story-falklands-war-exocets-deserves-told/
This will never fly.
Have they not considered the percentage of Facebook activity that takes place in a browser tab as a sideline to what you're actually doing, on mobiles during transit, and while ostensibly watching the telly?
i.e. Most Facebooking is a secondary activity, can anyone here imagine ever thinking "I'll dedicate the next half hour to Facebooking"?
Zuck's C5 moment?
"Randox can confirm the CertiFly app has been submitted to Google and is awaiting review." (Nov 2021)
This app is still not on Google Play and still must be sideloaded. After checking and double-checking that you've downloaded the apk from randox.com, the first thing it does is ask to scan your passport. Red flags waving like mad.
Longest Google Play review period I've ever heard of! Must be the first app in history that got onto the iOS store and can't get on to Google Play. What the hell is going on with it?
The dates were set to the current ones when the EU harmonised clock switching in Directive 2000/84/EC. Before that, in the 90's, I think I remember Germany switching around the September/October cusp and the UK a week or two later.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eudr/2000/84/pdfs/eudr_20000084_adopted_en.pdf
"Brexit has made it more expensive for drivers from the continent to work in Britain. Hauliers tend to be paid by distance rather than hours worked so additional border bureaucracy and delays hit their salary."
How often on a typical run does a driver delivering milkshakes to McDonalds outlets get delayed by border bureaucracy?
Recently I couldn't remember René Magritte's name; a google search or two later and my memory was jogged, case over. Except that I then see adverts featuring some of his work for weeks afterwards.
'Targetted Advertising' is complete rubbish.
(And we've all had those repeated adverts for something we've already bought or that we never wanted to buy but recently researched.)
For Seagate to absorb the VAT in this case by sending it first to Seagate UK, paying the VAT, then shipping it to the customer ...
VAT is payable when goods/services are sold/bought. Seagate UK would neither buy nor sell the replacement, no VAT would be due.
Seagate are well aware of problems like this - their statement acknowledges it. Their behaviour and statement on this occasion are pretty shitty. Companies of this size should get their act together, recognise that UK customers are not in the EU and adjust their operations appropriately.
(This applies whatever you think of Brexit.)
The vitriolic comments are a reaction to Ursula von der Leyen's comments and behaviour. Slagging off AZ, raiding the production site, threatening the UK's supply of Pfizer/Biontech, putting a border between Ireland/NI. Behaving like a tantrum-infused child in reaction to her/the Commission's own failure.
That border provision is supposed to be a last resort and she's taken less than 4 weeks to abuse it. Furthermore she did it against advice, and without consulting - or even informing - relevant parties (Irish Taoiseach, UK PM, NI Executive).
She's been asserting a contractual situation that is not borne out by the now-published contract with its Estimated Delivery Schedule. If she were to resign, I'm sure things would calm down much quicker.
I regularly listen to FM radio using my mobile phone; it much works pretty much everywhere, anytime.
If I'm competing with thousands of others for the local tower's capacity in/around a football stadium on match day I doubt that I'd get the throughput to listen to a live Internet radio stream; if I'm in the wilderness, there is no internet radio. This is why my personal minimum spec for a phone includes FM radio.
Other negatives for streaming include the required data allowances and the massive latency of the broadcast - listen to streamed football commentary and your 'latest scores' app will notify you of a goal/event way before you hear it happen on the 'live' broadcast. Also, I'd be very surprised if streaming used less power than FM
This half school year can be generally be written off - not because the teachers have not tried to provide remote work for the children, but because so many children (with their parents blessing) have not done any of the work
Maybe some teachers have bothered, I'm unaware of anything other than vague stuff on Twitter from my kids' school.
Meanwhile - if any work was set - some of us parents are working full-time, and while we would love our children to stay quiet and get on with educational things, we have our own work to do.
"Come Jan 31, if the UK leaves the EU as planned, Brexit will trigger a statutory instrument that changes some text to create a "UK GDPR". The little kingdom's Data Protection Act 2018 will also get tweaked. You can see the expected changes here. ®"
No, your link is to changes planned for "the event the UK leaves the EU without a deal". Come Jan 31, if the UK leaves the EU as planned, 'no deal' plans will not come into effect. Please keep up.
(Unless, of course you're talking about Ben and Holly when you mention a 'little kingdom'.)
I did use Viewranger with 1:50000 OS maps in conjunction with paper 1:25000 OS map, but since the map codes I now have the 1:25000 in the OS app - so now I find that I don't look at Viewranger so much, although I still record trails with that as the OS trail recording was not fit for purpose last time I tried it.
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